Sarasvati - Of Art and Knowledge

They've got a bunch of new stuff to go along with the new Mandalorian and Grogu movie and all that started on Thursday, so that was our main focus for today. I saw some posts yesterday and apparently lines were ridiculous on Thursday, but thankfully while the park was busy (it's Memorial Day weekend, after all), the Star Wars stuff wasn't mobbed.

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Recently Finished
Kills Well with Others
Sequel to Killers of a Certain Age, about middle aged female assassins. I liked this one, too. Not sure if there will be any more, because it's hard to keep going "okay this time we've really for real retired" with each book lol.

Secrets Typed in Blood
Third in the Pentecost and Parker series of historical murder mysteries. Still enjoying this series (in fact I think I liked this one better than the first two) and have already requested the next one from the library.

Nobody's Baby
Second in the Dorothy Gentleman sci-fi mystery novella series. I liked this one, too, though not as much as the first. And I'm not sure if there were some details in the first book that I missed or if this one just made it more clear. I thought it was sort of a retro sci-fi setting but it seems to be even more than just a retro vibe, but rather the spaceship having left earth sometime in the very early 20th century, based on various references to technology and attitudes on earth before they left. So I'm curious to see if more of that gets explored in future books.

Nodame Cantabile vol. 1-5
This is one of those modern classic manga series that I've heard about for ages but never read. It's set at a music college. I've read another series by the author (Tensai Family Company) ages and ages ago and liked it, so I'd always meant to get around to this someday but just never had. I got the first three volumes free off Amazon Japan a while back and just now got around to reading them, then switch to the English translation for the rest of the series as it's 25 volumes total and I don't love it enough to want to buy the whole thing. The English translation is pretty shoddy quality, both in terms of translation skill and the typesetting. It feels very much like a scanlation rather than a professional job, but I'm getting it for free from the library so I'll stick with it.

1. I started playing Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and it's super cute! It's an entirely exploration focused game, and I do love exploration. I do miss bashing enemies a bit, though, lol.

2. One of my meetings today got cancelled and one for tomorrow got rescheduled to next week, and when I was looking at the calendar I realized that a recurring meeting that's every other Thursday had somehow gotten deleted from my to-do list, so I wasn't expecting it today, but thankfully I realized well ahead of time and didn't miss the meeting.

3. If I fits, I sits!

It was very hot and sunny today, but we didn't realize that when we planned the trip, or I might have cancelled it. But we just stayed a couple hours for dinner and some shopping and it wasn't too bad.

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1. We went down to Disneyland tonight for dinner. We've had really nice weather lately and so I have not been in the habit of checking the temps, and if I had, I would have suggested holding off until this weekend because it was high 80s and very sunny, but we still had a nice time. There were a couple new menu items (and a bunch more Star Wars ones coming this weekend for the new Mandalorian movie) and they had some Pride merch out already (though hopefully more to come as there were only a handful of things). Overall a nice trip despite the heat.

2. We got the car windowshield finally fixed. They first tried to charge us over $2000 for it, then Carla finally got the manager to agree that it was a defect so they would do it for free, but then they told us the request to process it for free had been denied, but we were able to get it down to under half the price they'd originally quoted us, so at least that was something. Because of all that back and forth, we hadn't actually taken it in to get it replaced until yesterday, and then it wasn't ready for pickup until this morning. But it's back now and the window is fixed, yay!

3. Speaking of cars, though...when we got in the other car to go to the dealership this morning, it wouldn't start. The doors opened and the dashboard flashed, but it wouldn't start, and after looking it up, it seems like it's probably a case of the battery being almost dead. Enough juice to still open the doors, but not enough to start up. So tomorrow we'll call AAA to get it jumped and then go get a new battery. Since we couldn't drive over to the dealership to pick up the other car I ended up riding my new bike and then just putting it in the car to drive home. Thankfully the car that was getting repaired is the one that can fit a bike in it.

4. A couple months ago Disney announced that sometime later this year they would be doing away with the time restriction on park hopping. Pre-covid, if you had an annual pass or a park hopper ticket, you could start at either park and cross over to the other one whenever you wanted to. When they reopened after the covid closure they had introduced the reservation system and as part of that, they limited park hopping to after 1pm. Eventually they pushed that down to 11am, but now they are finally doing away with it altogether and today they announced the starting date will be June 9th. I'm excited about it! It's a pain to not be able to cross over earlier or change your starting park last minute, and it creates long lines at 11am when everyone is park hopping at the same time.

5. Love that Gemma face!